A note of explanation from Diana Boggs: When I was a student at Alfred University, I
used to get away to Buffalo to visit my brother Norman who was working for our
old friend, Jerry Raven at the Limelight Café.
That is where I met Marianne Welch (who was later married to my brother,
Norman for a while) and Jackson C. Frank who was part of their group The
Grosvenors. Marianne and I were
nineteen, Norman was twenty-two and Jack was twenty. I used to hang around with them running the tape recorder and
being their most appreciative audience.
We brought Jack to Woodstock, a place he later considered his home.
Marianne and I offer the following memory of Jack.
We are grateful to those who recognized Jack Frank’s
prodigious talent and have honored him at the Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame. And,
to Jim Abbott, author of Jackson C. Frank: The Clear Hard Light Of Genius,
whose years of dedicated friendship and caring for Jack, not an easy task,
resulted In a thoughtful and sensitive book that will also help to keep the
body of work that Jack accomplished alive and available. Jack and his work
deserve to be remembered and afforded their place in that extremely creative
time of the singer songwriter in England and America in the 1960’s.
It was Jerry Raven who welcomed Jack into his first regular
performing gig at Jerry’s iconic coffeehouse, The Limelight, on Edward Street
in Buffalo. For several years, Jack performed with Norm Boggs, who was Jerry’s
good friend from his Woodstock days and a grad student at U.B. Another grad
student, bass player, Ev Neinhaus and Marianne Welch, stepping out from her
role as The Limelight’s cook and into female vocalist, soon joined them.
The group was well received and performed around the
Northeast and Canada. But. It wasn’t hard to see that once he got his stage
“sea legs”, Jack was able to stretch more and grow into himself as a solo. His
voice was mesmerizing and his playing style, possibly because of his physical
limitations, gave him a unique sound that brought people back again and again.
Close friends knew of Jack’s miraculous, however, only
partial recovery from the severe burns he received in the historic Cleveland
Hill school fire. It is probable that
Jack should not have survived, never walked, never been able to live on his
own. The limp, the bent arms, the scars he carried, and his constant pain,
were, frankly horrific.
But, despite all of it, Jack was regarded by his friends as
one of the funniest, wryly humorous people ever. It was a gift that he could not avoid, even if he had wanted to.
It made him completely engaging and adorable while at the same time being the
biggest pain in the ass one ever met!
His music had an informal sound to it that he could only
achieve by meticulous practice. The themes he addressed in his lyrics melded
deeply personal and universal concepts and feelings and his love of language
shone throughout all of his writing. It was no small accident that Jack had an
enormous repertoire of traditional English and American folk songs. Those who
heard his first performances of that music can hear it reprised in very
subtle ways in some of his own writing.
The fire, the settlement from the fire, and his subsequent
travel to England and Europe, are the triggers that set his creative juices
free but – they also held the seeds of the physical, emotional, and
psychological problems that, ultimately, he could not overcome.
By the time he returned home and settled in Woodstock, money
gone, marriage beyond shaky, and his first child, a son, tragically taken just
hours after birth, Jack began a downward trajectory from which he never fully
emerged.
Marianne Welch Collins notes the following: The Boggs family and I did what we could to
soften the hard places that Jack landed, but ultimately we knew it was not going
to be enough. For many years, we became the home that” when you go there, they
have to take you in.” He was always welcome, but we always knew that when Jack
came to us, he wasn’t doing well.
Now, Jack’s artistic output and his contributions to the music
of his time are being acknowledged. He overcame so much to be able to
accomplish anything. He was a beautiful, brave, tenacious, gifted and inspiring
individual and all of us who had the opportunity to experience him – from Paul
Simon and Art Garfunkle, his European traveling companions, to Sandy Denny, his
lover and quite possibly his soul mate, to John Kay, his friend before
Steppenwolf fame, and all the rest of us, he is truly unforgettable. Thank you
for helping to keep his memory alive. And, thanks again to Jim Abbott for his
dedication to Jack and his legacy.
8-4-2015
